March 23, 2012 AT 7:54 am

MicroSD card FAQ

A while back I wrote an analysis of fake microSD cards. As a result of the post, I’ve received this question regularly via email:

“I’m trying to buy a thousand microSD cards for my embedded controller project. How do you qualify a microSD card?”

So, I thought it might be helpful to share my answer here.

There’s this awkward phase between the weekend project (where you buy your microSD card from Best Buy for $20 and have a no-questions return policy) and being Nokia (where you buy the same cards for $2 in quantities large enough to actually have leverage over vendors). When you source a few thousand cards at a time on the wholesale spot market, you’re basically on your own to control quality.